'It's obviously a special place': Ime Udoka makes return trip with Celtics to face Spurs
The holidays tend to present opportunities to make trips back home, and for Boston Celtics coach Ime Udoka, it was a homecoming of sorts when the Celtics took on the San Antonio Spurs on Friday night (8:30 p.m.).
Udoka bounced around the NBA as a player, but found success in San Antonio, where he played three of the seven seasons he spent in the league before serving seven years as an assistant coach for the Spurs under Gregg Popovich.
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"Out of my journeyman, role-player career, that's the one place I had a guaranteed contracts as a player and then seven years as a coach obviously getting right into it," Udoka said, "and the things that I learned and (Popovich) entrusted in me all the those years, it's obviously a special place that laid the foundation of who I was as a player and coach, so it's always going to have that meaning."
Udoka doesn't want his return to take away from the task at hand, as with the matchup against the Spurs, the Celtics (10-9) begin a difficult stretch of playing seven of their next eight games on the road.
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Udoka admitted that there could be an instance when he allows for nostalgia to set in for only a moment and he is looking forward to getting the opportunity of facing his former boss while running his own team.
"I think at the point I look down and coach against (Popovich) that will be something special, something that I've looked forward to for years," Udoka said. "We leave on Thanksgiving and get there and don't have a lot of time to catch up with people and all that. I look at them all as one game and it is what it is and I'm sure at some point I'll look down and think something, but from there it's just onto the game."
Facing the Spurs continues a mini reunion tour for Udoka of going up against former teams where he served as a coach. On Wednesday night, Udoka's Celtics lost to the Brooklyn Nets, 123-104. Udoka served as an assistant on Steve Nash's staff last year.
Two years ago, Udoka spent one season with the Philadelphia 76ers, who the Celtics host at TD Garden on Wednesday.
While Udoka's time in San Antonio holds a special spot in his heart, he feels he benefitted from moving on and coaching in different organizations.
"I always talk about those two years in a way were probably as invaluable as the seven years in San Antonio, for different reasons," Udoka said. "But it was a great time. I had a great time getting to know Steve (Nash) better and working with Mike D'Antoni and Jacque (Vaughn), who I played with and coached with before, so loved the time there, loved getting to know the players better and getting back to quote unquote the real NBA, outside of all the Boy Scouts in San Antonio."
Almost through a quarter of the season and with him in a leading role for the first time, Udoka's coaching style no longer gets lost in the background.
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Many of the Celtics players advocated for Udoka when the head coaching spot in Boston became vacant and he's shown to be a hard-nosed coach who supports his players, but also holds them accountable, both publicly and privately.
"He's a player's coach," said Celtics forward Grant Williams. "He's a guy that's there for you, but he also gets on you. That's something that I love, just because it's that intensity. You see his competitive nature come out. ... He's all about physicality, he's all about competitiveness, he's all about that grit. That's something that I feel like Celtics basketball is and has always been. He embodies that."